


Frankie Says (Get Your Shit Together, You Emotionally Constipated Jackass)

by tourdefierce



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Crack, Explicit Language, Fluff, M/M, Stereotypes, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-29 01:39:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tourdefierce/pseuds/tourdefierce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames learns that Arthur knows how to say Slurpee in French... among other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frankie Says (Get Your Shit Together, You Emotionally Constipated Jackass)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [French!Arthur](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/6292) by Katy-Romance. 



> This fic was written for i_reversebang and I had a lovely artists, katy_romance, who requested French!Arthur. Thanks to sabriel75 and samsamtastic for all their betaing and encouragement. Also, roflolmaomg doesn't suck at helpin' a sister out.
> 
> As a disclaimer goes, I'm an American and know nothing about anything but Slurpees and Ellen Page's nipples. All jest about nations is made without malicious intensions.
> 
> [Click here for NWS art](http://katy-romance.livejournal.com/15503.html) and please leave her some feedback on her lovely, really fantastic art. ♥

Eames is very good at his job.

People are tricky and predictable, sometimes down right boring, but they is always something interesting to be had in a person, even if it's only in the way they walk or their refusing to use their left indicator when driving. The point being that Eames is very good at his job because he enjoys picking people apart.

What lies behind the safe is what lured him into the dream world, but it is the people -- a different kind of safe that keeps him from waking up.

 _The point is_ , there is very little about people that Eames doesn't know.

Which is why Eames is surprised at feeling surprised, when he's walking to the warehouse one bright and cheerfully sunny Parisian day, to find himself witness to Arthur yelling in very aggravated French at someone outside his car door.

The road-rage is not surprising. Arthur has road-rage in dreams... when there isn't even traffic. Eames has seen Arthur chase a projection a full five blocks, just to scream about the proper rules and driving etiquette of a four-way-stop. After they woke up, Arthur lectured Cobb on the same rules, subconscious be damned, and when Cobb looked confused, Arthur ranted about the Department of Motor Vehicles for a full hour.

Anyway, the road-rage isn't new.

No, what throws Eames off is the fact that Arthur is screaming in perfectly accented French. The French words lifting and rolling off Arthur's tongue like it's inscribed into the thick grooves of his mouth—like it belongs there—that's what's such a fucking surprise.

So is the shiver of arousal that sneaks down Eames' back, but he blames that on the aggression. Arthur's poorly managed anger has always been a turn on.

<3<3<3

Ariadne is already at the warehouse, frowning her blueprints into submission, when Eames walks in.

"Ariadne, doll," he says before he can stop himself. "Did you know that Arthur's French?"

Her tiny hands are on her hips as she glares down at the papers in front of her. "Yes," she mutters distractedly. "Nice actually."

Eames stops where he is. "Nice?"

"Yeah."

Eames feels wronged.

"Wait," Ariadne says ten minutes later, when Eames has foregone asking her any other questions because of the sheer amounts of shame and petty rage filling his body. "How could you possibly have missed that?"

"It seems," he says carefully, swiveling his chair to address her. "That I know absolute shit about Arthur."

"But you stalk him _all the time_. You're creepy about it. You swoon over him when he waves his gun around like it's his dick. Hell, you probably write really crappy poetry about him."

"I'm not sure which part of that statement I should be more offended by."  

Ariadne waves her hand around, as if to say, _you're not paying attention_. Eames really hates that hand gesture when he's on the receiving end of it.

"Where did you think Arthur was from?"

"He's got an American accent!"

"Yeah, but that's just because his Dad was American," she says slowly. "I mean, Eames, how did you think he met Mal?"

Eames frowns. "I don't bloody-well know! At the fucking corner shop for all I know, I didn't really bother myself with particulars since by the time I came around she was already Mad-Mal."

Ariadne chews on her bottom lip. It's a tell of hers when she's thinking about doing something that she knows someone isn't going to approve of--nine times out of ten, that _someone_ is Arthur. Eames leans forward and tries to look as innocent as possible.

"They grew up in the same neighborhood in Nice," she says finally. "And Arthur is definitely not American. Have you seen how seriously that man drinks his espresso?"

Eames stares blankly at her until she shakes her head and goes back to her blueprint scowling, muttering, "I thought you were supposed to be observant" under her breath.

"Cheeky bint," he says in response, but his mind is already on other things.

<3<3<3

Eames stews on this new information.

He had simply assumed that Arthur was American by his accent and his relationship with Dom. However, if Mal was his first contact with the Cobbs then his Frenchness makes a lot more sense.

In fact, it sort of explains a lot of things.

<3<3<3

They're in a training run, getting their arses handed to them by projections, when Eames finally confronts Arthur about this being French business.

"You're still a poof, right?"

Arthur glares at him from where he's crowded down near the front of the car.

"I mean, I haven't got that wrong too, have I? You're still a gay, darling?"

"Is this really an appropriate time to be having this conversation?" He says with biting seriousness and that bulging vein in his forehead that Eames adores so much.

"You're a constant surprise, Arthur-love. I do hope you know that every time you surprise me, I want to ravish you even more."

"Jesus-fucking-Christ," Arthur says, still scowling, before he shoots himself out of the dream. Because as much as he complains that Eames is the one with the flare for the dramatic; they both know that Arthur's the real diva between them.

Two minutes later, the projections blow up the car Eames is hiding behind, launching him out of the dream.

"Well, that went well," he says, watching Arthur's retreating back as he walks out of the warehouse in a strop, anger radiating off him in waves.

"You fucked up my trial run," Ariadne says from his left. They're both staring at Arthur's tense back. "You couldn't keep your mouth shut, could you?"

"Whatever do you mean, darling?"

Ariadne snorts. "And everyone bitches about _my_ curiosity," she says as she coils the tubing to the PASIV.  

Eames doesn't even flinch when Arthur slams the door.

<3<3<3

Eames is laying in his hotel room, thinking about purchasing a bulldog when Arthur calls him.

"Why are you making this a thing?"

Eames smiles. "I would love to make any sort of thing with you, pet. And by thing, I surely mean to imply the naughtiest things your mind can come up with."

Arthur's sigh is tightly controlled. "I'm French. There? Are you happy?"

"Not in the least," Eames says, bristled. "I fucking hate French people."

"What does that have anything to do with my nationality?"

"Because," Eames says slowly, considering how much of the truth he wants to tell. Half truths are so much easier than wholes. "Also, _nationality_? You really feel that strongly?"

"Eames," is what is growled in response.

"Because I bloody-well know you're French now and I still want to shag you repeatedly and possibly own a pet with you, in a very permanent and domestic way. That's not _normal_ ," Eames says because he's tired of being surprised by Arthur all the time. Maybe this whole truth will surprise Arthur for once in his insufferable life—his _French_ insufferable life.

"How do you feel about the name Frankie?" Eames adds in the end because Arthur's breathing has hitched over the line and it's making Eames uncomfortable in his pants as well as the parts of him that don't like talking about the feelings holed up in his chest.  

There are a few more breaths before Arthur says, "I guess Frankie would be alright." Then he hangs up.

"I can safely say that I have no idea what the hell just happened," Eames says to the empty room, Arthur's name blinking on his mobile.

He goes back to googling pictures of bulldogs, thinking that if he had that many adorable little wrinkles then Arthur wouldn't be so mean to him.

<3<3<3

The job goes well, as most jobs do now-a-days post inception. By ten that night, they're all collapsing into the nearest seedy establishment Eames can find.

It's small and crowded with people that Eames finds fairly annoying but the beer is cold, which is all that matters. Well, almost all that matters. Everything else that matters involves Arthur's rolled shirt-sleeves and an honest-to-god sweatervest that has Eames salivating at his unleashed boarding school fantasies.

"You're drooling," Yusuf says from his place at Eames' side.

"I am not."

Yusuf squints at him. "I still can't believe the two of you haven't shagged yet."

"I want to buy a pet and argue over its' name with him," Eames says, deadpan.

Yusuf almost chokes on his beer and Eames feels his sentiment, whole-heartedly. Eames looks down at his beer, before reluctantly meeting Yusuf's sputtering face.

"Fuckin' Christ, that's a new development, mate."

"Don't I bloody know it," Eames mutters. "Another pint, yeah?"

Eames downs his own and the rest of Yusuf’s before making his way toward the bar.

You know those moments, when the whole place goes just a little bit quiet and suddenly it's like you have spidey-sense or something and can hear insanely clear even if it's halfway across the room?

Well, that's what happens.

And what Eames hears stops him in his tracks, mid-ordering of beer.

Eames wants to remind the world that _he's a fucking Englishman_ and they will order pints through the damn Blitzkrieg if they bloody-well want to, but he can't. He's too busy listening to Arthur.

Speaking in hushed French.

"Mots français aléatoires ici."

Before he knows it, he's abandoning the bar maid (Christ, he's never going to be able to show his face for shame in London for a decade) and walking toward Arthur's decadent slouch. He's bending close to Ariadne, gesturing angrily with his hands and frowning that frown that always drives Eames mad with desire to rub his thumb all over it.

When Arthur looks up at Eames' looming and creepily staring form, Eames is too busy looking at his own crotch.

"Huh," Ariadne says. "I always pictured you would hang to the left."  

Eames looks up, blinking and then they all look back down to his crotch, where his clearly outlined erection is present.

"This is going to be a problem," he says, voice hoarse and desperate for that pint he abandoned along with his sanity.

Arthur grins, wolf like and hungry. Eames closes his eyes to Ariadne's snorting laughter and heads back to Yusuf.

<3<3<3

"I thought you hated the French."

"I do," Eames grumbles across the phone. "They're posh gits."

"Aren't you like royalty on your little island?"

Eames ignores her. "The only people I hate more than the French, are the Germans."

"Over some silly soccer game?"

"It was a goal, Ariadne," Eames sighs fitfully. "I don't know how many times I have to tell you that it was clearly _a goal_ and for fuck's sake, stop saying _soccer_."

"Whatever," she snorts, clearly in mocking dismissal because she hasn't a soul. "Is it all the French words or just Arthur's?"

Eames barks a laugh. "My problem is, thankfully, only Arthur-shaped."

"That's a silver lining, isn't it?"

She sounds gleeful. Eames puts his head between his thighs and breaths deeply because it's clear that the world is conspiring against him. This is not his fault and he's not sure why he's being so blatantly punished.

"Yusuf told you," Eames says flatly.

Ariadne only laughs across the line, long and dark as if she's actually a demon. A demon from _Canada_. Eames hears her choke out 'puppy' and 'commitment ceremony' in between peels of laughter.

Then he hangs up.

Even looking at pictures of bulldog puppies, faces all smashed up in cuteness, doesn't make him feel better.

He gives up, has a wank (no secret about what) and goes to bed grumpy as fuck.

<3<3<3

Despite wanting to leave, Eames doesn't.

"Come on," Ariadne says as Eames watches Arthur wipe the place for prints with such ferocity that it makes his head spin. It might just be the smell of bleach though. "You can crash at my place."

Eames swears that he sees Arthur smirking on his way out.

<3<3<3

"You've never been the type to wallow," Arthur says, condescension ripe and dripping from his words.

Eames rolls over, thinks about hurling his phone against the wall but settles for burying his head into the couch cushions. "You don't know me very well then."

"Tsk, tsk," Arthur laughs across the line. It's humorless.

"Did you call just to torture me?"

Silence invades the line and Eames adjusts the phone to his ear. It's rare that Arthur calls for something that isn't work when they aren't currently on a job. When they're on a job, Arthur calls him all the time for the most meaningless reasons because he's bound and determined to drive Eames round the bend. Eames has decided that it's some sort of sneaking inception, where Arthur makes Eames fall asleep to the sound of his voice every night and wakes up more in love with the son-of-a-bitch than ever.

Arthur is sneaky.

"Ariadne sent me a picture of a bulldog."

Eames groans. "I'm going to dig out her intestines with a spoon."

"And I'm supposed to be the one with unfounded rage?"

"It's not unfounded!"

"She's helping you with your feelings," Arthur says smugly.

Eames frowns. "I don't have any feelings."

"All these wrinkles beg to differ."

Some part of Eames is embarrassed but mostly he's just angry. "I'm going to make you beg—"

"This is what I'm talking about," Arthur says with a certain amount of glee. "Everyone always assumes that I'm the first one to resort to violence."

Eames smiles into the pillow. "I was going to say, _make you beg for my cock_ , which isn't really violent. Although, I will say that my cock can do violence, if you want to be hit with it—"

"I'm hanging up now."

"I feel like the tables of fate have turned in my favor."

"Watch your back," Arthur snarls across the line and then it goes dead.

Eames rolls over.

"How's it going?" Ariadne asks, twenty minutes later when she walks into the door.

"It's hard to say."

Ariadne arches an eyebrow, before shrugging and handing him a pamphlet about adopting pets. It's slightly wrinkled and the only sign that Arthur's actually had a look at it is a smear of blood on the corner that may very well have been from what Ariadne claimed was a knife-fight wound to her eyebrow two days earlier.

"I'm onto you!" Eames screeches, opening up the folded paper to see an adorable photograph of a battered dog looking for a home.

Ariadne throws a shoe at him in response.

<3<3<3

"Hey, Eames! Do you think Arthur can say Slurpee in French?

"Eames! Are you listening to me? I _said_ Slurpee probably sounds badass in French, don't you think? It's the drink of fucking champions."

...

"You're hard just thinking about, aren't you?

"You should be ashamed of yourself. Slurpees are sacred things, Eames and shouldn't be subject to your dick, like, ever."

Eames wants the sofa to swallow him.

<3<3<3

Eames spends the next two days doing the closest thing to introspection, such a dirty word, that he'll ever let himself come to do.

He tries, carefully and blankly, to pinpoint the moment in his life when wanting Arthur in the most feral way shifted to something equally as sexual but also pathetically domestic.

"This is embarrassing," Eames says to the empty room.

Ariadne rolls out into the hallway. Her desk chair is alarmingly sophisticated.

"No shit, dude."

Eames frowns from his place on the couch.

"I'm not too far gone to be ashamed of your vernacular."

"Your totally done for," she continues. "You love him. For realsies."

Eames throws half his body over the side of the couch. Ariadne is wearing an honest-to-god headset and there is a Slurpee in the duck-tape fashioned cup holder on the arm-rest. She looks like she's ready to go to war... or at least inflict some serious damage to teenagers on the World of the Warcraft chat rooms.

"How did this happen?"

Ariadne shrugs and sucks on her straw. "Not sure but I feel like all this emotional growth is doing something to my ovaries. Think I could be pregnant just from the sheer force of your lovey-dovey thoughts about doing Arthur's laundry or running a puppy mill or _whatever_ you spend your time thinking about with that stupid look on your face?"

Eames stares. Ariadne swirls around in her chair.

"Arthur would never support a puppy-mill," Eames says slowly.

"Seriously, you need to get laid. I think all this adoption of orphan puppies is doing something to your balls," she says with a wide eyes.

"My balls are fine."

"Liar. Your balls? They're blue and tortured."

"Have you been peeking at my crown jewels?"

Ariadne adjusts her headset and chews on the straw that leads to the Slurpee, which was probably procured illegally because, Christ, do they have Slurpee corner shops in Paris?

"I'm just saying, man, you need to stick your dick in something that's not your fist because I think it's melting your brains."

"I feel faint."

"Whatever," she says rolling back into her room. "Don't jerk off on my couch."

Eames stops hanging onto the back of the couch and lets his body flop back onto the cushions.

<3<3<3

Three days later Arthur breaks down Ariadne's front door. He kicks it in with his ridiculously long legs and Eames lies on the couch and watches.

"Why aren't you wearing clothes," is what he says, scowl firmly on his face.

Eames looks down at the towel clinging to his waist. "I just showered."

Arthur continues to scowl.

"Arthur—"

"I'm a cat person," he says. The words seem twisted out of him, like they were originally something else but they got morphed and changed in his throat.

"Frankie can be a feline," Eames says because his mind is suddenly blank with the image of _helping Arthur iron his tie_.

Eames thinks Ariadne might be right.

"So," Eames says, when Arthur continues to stand in the doorway, pin-striped suit fitting him like a glove.

"Is this going to be a problem?"

Eames wrinkles his forehead. He's lost.

Arthur rolls his eyes. "Me, being French. Is this going to be a problem?"

"Um, probably in the name of professionalism, yes," Eames settles on. He stands up and re-knots his towel. He thinks that maybe he should be standing for this conversation, because Arthur looks like he's wearing his suit as armor today. "But only if you don't speak French where other people can see me."

Arthur frowns. "Because?"

"Because I'll get a stiffy and it'll be awkward because you hate it when I'm unprofessional and if I'm not wearing any pants, which I've a habit of doing, I might poke someone's eye out," Eames says in a rush. "Also, Ariadne makes me feel inadequate about my cock."

"I'm a little bit of a sociopath," Arthur says, brow still furrowed delightfully. "But I promise not to kill any potential pets we might acquire."

"Are we confessing? Is that what this is, because I have to tell you, I want to _cohabitate_ with you and it's freaking me the fuck out."

"I can imagine so," Arthur says, taking a step inside the room.

Eames gestures to the broken door. "Ariadne thinks I have a severe case of blueballs."

"When was the last time you," then Arthur makes a gesture with his hands that Eames thinks might indicate sex or is sign-language for taco.

"Um," Eames says with unease. "It's been... a while."

"Mr. Eames, have you been _celibate_?"

"It's just," Eames says before pausing, thinking over the last few months of his life. "I've been distracted by all these feelings."

"Feelings?"

"Yes. All of them that I apparently have for you," Eames finishes.

Arthur looks lovely, face frowned in concentration and just, really fucking lovely.

"Take off you towel."

"Shouldn't we talk about this," Eames says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. "Not that I'm a big fan of all these feelings but I feel like I'm mature enough to admit that talking about this, whatever between us, is probably healthy."

Arthur takes another step toward him. Eames clutches at his towel.

"Eames..."

"Arthur, I'm just saying that I don't have a lot of willpower and you're testing it with your face."

"My face?"

"Yes," Eames says, unknotting his towel. "Your face makes me want to drop my towel and suck your prick and... make you food by candle light."

Arthur tilts his head.

Eames shrugs, voice pleading and a little bit desperate. "It's a very convincing face."

"Eames, let go of the towel."

"Arthur, darling—"

Arthur practically growls. "Eames, we can name the fucking cat Frankie and you can pick out the drapes in whatever ugly pattern you want, just lose the damn towel."

Arthur climbs over the couch and they meet in the middle, awkward limbs colliding over and on the upholstery while Eames tries to devour Arthur's face. It's delightful. It's lovely.

Eames' balls are ecstatic.

<3<3<3

They fuck right there on Ariadne's red couch, door lying on the floor in splinters and neither of them give a single fuck.

"Eames," Arthur moans out, body tensing and melting underneath him as Eames swallows around Arthur's cock. Eames has managed to strip Arthur bare, peeling all the layers of suit away from his body and pressing him into the couch with his mouth. Arthur's cock is just as mouth-watering as the rest of him and Eames doesn't waste anytime giving it the proper worshipping it deserves.

He takes his time, lapping at the head and the vein on the underside before Arthur tugs once on his hair and Eames swallows him down with a slurp and gentle suction.

"Oh, _oh_ ," Arthur half-sighs, half-moans above him. He's flushed and Eames has never seen a more perfect sight in his life. Seriously.

Arthur's always perfectly pale and he never blushes unless he's literally bleeding from the face.

It doesn't take long before Arthur's thighs are widening, squirming and flexing beneath Eames' palms and the result, the result is Eames pressing one finger between Arthur's arse and the couch and sliding inside.

"Fuck," Arthur hisses, probably at the roughness of the finger with only spit as its aide but before Eames has time to worry, Arthur is grinding down and gasping, kittenish and desperate, like Eames can't get further enough inside him.

Eames knows the feeling.

Eames swallows a few times around Arthur's cock, working his finger in and out before settling in and pressing, pressing _pressing_ pressing until Arthur's arching that lovely neck and moaning, high and desperate as he comes in Eames' mouth. It's salty and more than a little bitter but Eames sucks it down, mouthing at Arthur's cock until it's too sensitive.

Eames takes to Arthur's thighs immediately, placing kisses up and down them. He thinks these thighs are going to be his favorites. He doesn't remove his finger, swirling it around Arthur's hole until the man mews with a breathy little gasp that has Eames practically mounting him to get at Arthur's throat.

He licks and sucks there, finger moving in and out with tiny little strokes that has them both shuddering; Arthur in over stimulation and Eames, because he's in awe. Also, he's humping the couch pretty aggressively, so close to coming it's un-fucking-real.

When Eames presses in close, sucking at Arthur's neck with abandon and fingerbanging him with a gentleness that Eames is sure comes directly from wanting Arthur in a forever sort of way, Arthur stretches.

"Mon dieu, Mr. Eames," he whispers, blissed out and wanton and _holy fucking shit_.

Eames comes all over the couch and Arthur's shins.

They don't move. Eames' head is tucked into Arthur's bare shoulder, rubbing his face all over the sweaty skin there and licking at the bite marks he left when he came. Eames' finger isn't inside Arthur anymore but he can't stop touching the little pucker there, just rubbing it and listening to the way Arthur's voice dips and softens in delight.

"Je vous aime plus de la semaine de requin," Arthur says in French that Eames doesn't understand. He nods anyway, because it sounds like a declaration, it sounds like Arthur wants to watch Eames cook omelets and argue over the telly volume and let Eames kiss the instep of his foot, the inside of his ankle and totally fuck him over every surface of every piece of real estate they own.

It sounds a lot like love.

Of course, that's when Ariadne walks in, coats them both in Slurpee and all the yelling starts.

<3<3<3

 

*The sentence Arthur mutters is roughly translated as: **I love you more than I love shark week**. This was translated for me by roflolmaomg because I don't speak any sort of French.


End file.
